ImagesMagUK_March_2022

For the second, they cook the meal, eat the dinner, and then clean the kitchen right afterwards. This takes about 20 or 30 minutes extra. The third example will cook the meal, eat dinner, and clean everything up a day or two later. Dishes are piled in the sink, and the dishwasher for some reason is always full. The kitchen isn’t cleaned until either someone is coming over, or some of the dishes are needed again. Everything is always last minute. Which of the three workflows listed above sounds like how you run your production in your shop? Can you identify which is the most efficient at getting more work handled daily? Production effectiveness At the end of the day, did your team accomplish what it needed it to do? If you had 20 orders that had to be produced and shipped today, did all 20 get out the door? Are you measuring and talking about effectiveness on a consistent basis? You should be judging your team on results. Not on how busy everyone looks. One of the challenges that leaders often overlook is simply stating the expectations to the team so they can understand what they have to accomplish today. Are you charting out today what needs to be accomplished tomorrow? If you are missing critical production dates, what are the reasons why? If you backtrack through them, what do you think you will find? Start doing the work to eliminate the excuses as to why things don’t happen how or when they should. www.images-magazine.com MARCH 2022 images 63 Your art department goal should be to get approval the first time for at least 85% of the work going out BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT This could be with your people. Your equipment. The consumables. Even the type of work that you are accepting. Production scheduling I’ve written before about the best way to schedule work with the ‘Rush, Late, Today, Tomorrow’ mantra. If you missed that, read my article here: imagesmag.uk/ schedulework. Right now a lot of shops are simply behind. Production will not get caught back up if you dogpile more orders on top of what is already late. Critical production dates won’t be hit when you are buried neck-deep in a backlog of work. If you have a seemingly gigantic pile of late orders and no light at the end of the tunnel, here are some tips for you to get caught back up and back on track. ■ Do the maths. If you know your average set-up time and production run time for each machine, look at each order individually and calculate how long it will take to run that job. Add ten minutes at the back end for tear-down. ■ If you don’t know your averages for each machine, try using a simple tool like my Production Tracker app. Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. ■ Build out your schedule with the time calculated for a regular day. Then, figure out if you worked an extra couple of hours or Saturdays, where would that take you? ■ If you still can’t get caught up, consider outsourcing a few jobs to some trusted contract printers in your area. Yes, sometimes contract printers actually print for one another. That is ‘co-opetition’ at its finest. ■ Again, look at the type of work that you are taking. If your schedule is overloaded with less-than-profitable work, or dinky orders that don’t make sense, consider changing the type of orders you accept. Increasing your pricing or your minimum order sometimes helps too. ■ Keep your team informed on what’s going on. State the challenge. Benchmark it and celebrate milestones. Make it a positive experience instead of a lion tamer’s act with a whip and a chair. Marshall Atkinson is a production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting and co-founder of Shirt Lab, a sales and marketing education company, with Tom Rauen. He focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. www.atkinsontshirt.com You can’t manage what you don’t measure or something else you can easily outsource. Set expectations Set the expectations with the client during the sales process on when the art approval will be coming to them, and the steps they need to take “In order to hit your production date, we’ll be sending you an art approval form on Wednesday. Please approve or state changes to the art by the end of business on Wednesday, so we have the necessary time to complete your order.” Then, keep your word on sending them the approval. Workflow tips What works best is to have the screens and digitising complete and ready two business days before the production is to start on the order. If you are doing this the day that job is to run you are jeopardising the on-time production for the order and putting tremendous pressure on your production team that they don’t need. Don’t forget we want to stage the production by the equipment the day before it is to run. That won’t happen unless everything is ready to go. If you have sent the art approval and haven’t heard back, have sales or customer service call them. This is part of their job. Occasionally, the email wound up in the spam folder or is buried 250 emails deep in someone’s inbox. Don’t send them another email. Call. Shop organisation Getting your shop ready to work and staying ready to work is part of your production management team’s job. Your production area should be kept neat, clean and ready to work. Orders should be scheduled in advance, and proactively staged by the equipment one business day before the job is to run. When chaos is allowed to take over, this is a poor reflection on your production leadership team. How your production floor is laid out, organised and staged with work is important to how your shop is going to hit critical production dates. I want you to consider how people cook dinner for a minute. There are three types. The first type prepares the meal and cleans up after themselves as they go. Cutting boards, knives, bowls, and any utensils that are used are cleaned or placed in the dishwasher as the meal is cooking.